EXPERIENCE; 

THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT 
IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 



A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF 

REQUIREMENTS FOR 
THE DOCTORATE IN PHILOSOPHY 

AT THE 

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 
JUNE. 1906 



BY 



MARCUS NEUSTAEDTER, M. D. 

\\ 



NEW YORK: 

The Greenwich Printing Company 

1907 



£>CC}1, 















h 



!Ta6te 0/ Contents 



Introduction. — Reason why ancient philosophy before the 
Stoics is not concerned with the concept. — The Sophist 
movement a step in this direction. — The Stoic's concept 
of experience as a criterion of truth. — Sceptics opposing 
the dogmatism of Stoics. — Descartes' right beginning and 
dogmatic culmination in his philosophy. — Locke's in- 
quiry. — His concept of experience. — Hume destroys knowl- 
edge of things. — Kant's exposition of the concept. — Fichte 
and Hegel supplementing Kant. — Herbart's theory. — 
Pragmatism Pp. vii-xiv 

I 

The Stoic exposition of the concept of experience as 
epnreipia fj.e^odix?]. — Their upiTrfpiov of truth. — The soul 
as a tabula rasa. — The combination of memories gives ex- 
perience Pp. 15-16 

II 

Mediaeval philosophy theological. —Dawning of the concept 
in Occam's philosophy. — As a combination of perception 
and thought P. 17 

III 

Experience of Paracelsus as Erfahrung. — First mentioned in 
the German language P. 18 

IV 
Locke's methodological elaboration of the concept of ex- 
perience. — Reassertion of the Stoic tabula rasa. — Ex- 



IV 

perience the source of ideas. — Empirical explanation of 
experience. — His refutation of innate ideas. — Experience 
through and through sensuous. — Distinction between 
primary and secondary qualities. — Space and time ob- 
tained from experience. — Simple and complex ideas. — 
Origin of knowledge in ideas, which constitute experience. — 
General ideas and their connection with language; a result 
of the development of the concept of experience. — The 
essentials and limitations of his philosophy Pp. 19-28 

V 

Hume carries Locke's theory to its logical conclusion. . . Ideas 
representing sense perceptions. — Knowledge of things 
impossible. — Existence of ideas such as substance and 
causality denied. — His influence on Kant Pp. 28-31 

VI 

Kant's concept of experience. — A continuous combination 
of sensuous intuition, a synthesis by the understanding. — 
Space and time as necessary conditions a priori. — Material 
of sensation subsumed under these formal elements. — The 
mind acting on the sensuous intuition through the categories 
of the understanding. — Sensuous intuitions the passive 
receptivity of the mind. — The work of the catagories as 
active spontaneity of the mind. — The combination of the 
two elements gives rise to experience. — Kant's didactical 
method in the development of the above theory. — The 
essentials and limitations of his theory Pp. 31-39 

VII 

Fichte supplements Kant's theory. — Develops Kantian subjec- 
tivism. — The Ego as a conditio sine qua non of experience. — 
Experience as the fact-act. — Categories generated in the 
dialectical movement of the Ego and non-Ego. — Ideas arising 
with a "feeling of necessity" the basis of experience .... Pp. 39-43 



VIII 

Hegel's self-unfolding of the spirit from perception (Ans- 
chauung) to conception (Begriff). — This procedure a dialec- 
tical necessity. — Categories genetically derived. — Absolute 
experience Pp. 43-45 

IX 

Herbart's ecclecticism. — His starting point in experience as a 
psychological factor. — Metaphysics a necessary basis of 
psychology. . Pp. 45-48 

X 

Pragmatism or Radical Empiricism. — The concept of exper- 
ience as a practical maxim. — Experience is the criterion of 

truth Pp. 48-52 

Conclusion Pp. 53-55 

Bibliography Pp. 56-58 



Meae carce matri et sanctce memories 
patris mei, omnibus meis grammaticis et 
rhetoribus, qui mihi principes et ad susci- 
piendam et ingrediendam rationem human- 
itatis fuerunt atque doctor ibus J. P. Gordy 
Carolo Gray Shaw et Roberto McDougall 
quorum praelectiones philosophicas audivi 
maxima cum gratia haec dissertatio inscribitur 



"INTRODUCTION." 

In an exposition of the historical development of the con- 
cept of experience we are dealing with an epistemological prob- 
lem. We must take account at once of the character of this 
concept and its relation to the mind which is attempting to 
get at fundamental truths. Such a problem could only arise 
when the mind begins to reflect upon the possibility of the exist- 
ence of knowledge and of its origin. 

The ancient philosophers could not have raised such a 
question, for according to them the world in its completeness 
was taken as a fact, and the question was : How did it get 
into the mind ? They were only concerned with the meta- 
physical question as to the nature of the first and ultimate prin- 
ciples of a material world order. Even the Sophists, who began 
to lay stress on the subjective element, were concerned with 
moral conduct rather than with the problem of knowledge. 
But in placing emphasis on the importance of looking upon 
the individual as an end in himself, they rebelled against the 
existing conditions in philosophy, in which cosmological prob- 
lems engaged the attention of thinkers, rather than "anthropo- 
logical" ones. The Sophist movement was characterized by a 
breaking away from these traditional methods. The new school 
began to inquire into the validity of all the existing principles 
and laws. Its members looked upon the individual as a micro- 
cosmos in himself, who ought to work out his own destiny. 
When the habit of inquiring into certain laws was acquired 



Vlll 



there was no stop to the progress of it. All possible principles 
connected with the welfare of the individual were carefully dis- 
cussed and thus great stress was laid upon the individual. Con- 
clusions previously arrived at were cast aside, and the subject 
was made the starting point and criterion for truth. Thus the 
first attempt was made to interpret the world in terms of the 
individual rather than in the reverse order. 

This same attempt characterizes the method of modern 
philosophy, where the problem of knowledge is a fundamental 
one. Such a method inevitably leads to the discussion of the 
nature of experience. 

In trying to define true knowledge the Sophists were look- 
ing for a criterion of truth. Protagoras then stated his cele- 
brated maxim, "Man is the measure of all things." Things 
are what they appear to be to the individual. It seems to me 
that this tendency to find a subjective criterion for truth cul- 
minated in the rise of a theory of the idea of experience with 
the Stoics. 

They were really the first thinkers to inquire how we get 
knowledge and whether it is a given thing to every man. In 
their uncritical contemplation it was bnt natural to view the 
vast scenery before them as projecting its image as it was re- 
flected in the pupil of their fellows. And from these observa- 
tions they were led to theorize about the part played by the 
senses and the soul — a duality which was then fully accepted 
as existing — in the making of a content of consciousness, which 
they called experience. The senses were, then, the active media 
through which the objects projected their images upon the soul 
as upon a blank tablet, or, according to some Stoics, making 
impressions on it as on a piece of wax. The impression or state 
was the experience of the earlier Stoics. The more critical of 
them, however, were not entirely satisfied with this theory and 
amended it to the effect that the impression thus produced at 
the same time alters the state of the soul — in which state the 



IX 

soul announces both its existence and that of the object. The 
originally vacant soul is thus filled with characters or images, 
which are retained by memory. The memorizing of these states 
constituted for the Stoics knowledge by experience. It is per- 
tinent to state here that this exposition of the Stoics' concept 
of experience is very similar to Locke's critical elaborations of 
the idea as the basis of human knowledge. 

This dogmatic assumption of the Stoics regarding the 
nature of knowledge did not flourish without opposition. The 
Sceptics attacked it with powerful weapons. They showed that 
senses are deceiving and the intellect alone cannot give knowl- 
edge. Furthermore, the world of objectivity is totally inde- 
pendent of the subject, and no relation between the knower and 
the thing to be known is established. The chasm remains uu- 
bridged. 

However successful the Sceptics may have been, they 
could not doubt the existence of consciousness — a fact neither 
to be proved nor contradicted. And this led Descartes in mod- 
ern times to begin philosophy by assuming the sceptic position. 
He began by doubting everything — even his own existence. 
But he was conscious of his doubt and therefore certain of 
his existence. Thus his own consciousness became to him the 
ultimate criterion. He did not, however, adhere to his sub- 
jective point of view, but from a clear and distinct idea which 
he had of God, dogmatically inferred God's independent exist- 
ence. His correct starting point promised, if logically and criti- 
cally carried out, to yield most convincing results, but in his 
digression into the realm of Metaphysics he completely failed 
to reach the epistemological position. 

Locke, on the other hand, by inquiring into the nature 
of the human understanding, as preliminary to the inquiry 
into the nature of the world, struck the right point, and with 
his school the development of the concept of experience in 
modern times assumes the character of a methodological inquiry. 



His great merit lies in the fact that he was the first one to 
make a distinction between primary and secondary qualities 
of things. There are qualities of things with which our mind 
is impressed through the medium of our senses in the same 
way as the Stoics argued, but these qualities are not the sum 
total of the world of objectivity. There are qualities in addition 
to those primary ones, which are in us, such as: color, tone, 
etc. These secondary qualities are produced in us as a result 
of the way in which our senses are affected by these primary 
qualities of things. The impressions thus produced form for 
Locke the sensuous experience. These experiences form the 
ideas of our mind which are the basis of knowledge. 

But history was to repeat itself. The same opposition 
that the Stoics had to face became now the lot of the Lockian 
school. Hume, the profoundest of modern sceptics, carried 
Locke's theory to its logical consequences and denied the possi- 
bility of knowledge of primary qualities at all. In the eternal 
flux of images there is no room for even a permanent mind. 
All there is are impressions or sensations and the union of 
these. By force of habit we are accustomed to group these 
in a necessary relation. We are nothing but a lot of states of 
consciousness made up of the sum of our sensuous intuitions and 
ideas upon these. 

If this be true, then Hume's, as well as the Pyrrhonic 
scepticism before him, left a consciousness unexplained — a stuff 
to be examined. And this task was taken up by Kant. So far 
as our sensuous intuitions go, Kant admits, Hume was right. 
But what about the consciousness that acts upon these in- 
tuitions ? Such an ego was denied by Hume, but since no sat- 
isfactory logical account of such facts as memory and identity 
of personality was rendered, a reconstruction of Hume's theory 
became necessary. The school of Leibnitz, on the other hand, 
of which Kant was then still an adherent, while recognizing 
the self-activity of the mind and certain innate possessions of 



XI 



it, had arrived at its standpoint not epistemologicaliy or criti- 
cally, but dogmatically. In this conflict between the two op- 
posing schools Kant saw his opportunity. Intnitions of the 
senses, Kant says, give us sensations, disconnected, chaotic ap- 
pearances, but without them the mind can know nothing, be- 
cause they serve as the material of knowledge. The mind must 
react upon them, put them together and place them, as it were, 
in their respective groups — hold together and synthesize them, 
so that knowledge may arise. Through this synthesis, on the 
part of the understanding, of the intuitions received through the 
senses, experience arises. This experience is the content of con- 
sciousness, the knowledge, the criterion of truth. Before we 
proceed with our examination of the history of the further de- 
velopment of the concept of experience up to the present day, 
we must take account of the way in which Kant reached these 
conclusions. 

He took an object of knowledge and analyzed it and found 
(1) that we have sensuous intuitions and (2) that there are 
elements in it contributed by the understanding. A further 
analysis of intuitions reveals the fact that there are two a priori 
elements of space and time under which all intuitions must be 
subsumed. They are like colored glasses, through which we 
must look in order to see. Now it becomes the function of the 
mind to act upon these intuitions by means of categories or laws 
of the understanding. They are universal and necessary con- 
ditions under which we must subsume the sensuous perceptions 
in order to be able to judge intelligently. And this necessity 
means for Kant a justification of their a priori nature. It is 
not that the a priori forms have been there before we began 
to know (in the Leibnitzian sense innate), but we put them 
there as a necessary presupposition to any experience, as a 
synthesizing unity of the manifold intuitions. It would be 
well to stop here with our quest, for in Kant's theory the 
concept of experience is in its full bloom. But Kantianism, 



Xll 



after a thorough exploration of this great field of knowledge, 
concludes with a duality in which the factors are separated by a 
deep chasm. Through experience we attain to knowledge of 
the phenomenal world order. As to the things-in- themselves, 
the noumena, the substratum behind the phenomenal world, 
these we cannot know, because they are in a range outside of 
any possible experience. 

The successors of Kant, Eichte and Hegel under- 
took to bridge this abyss. In doing it they continued to develop 
the concept of experience. Fichte explains away the thing-in- 
itself by making individual freedom the source of it and Hegel 
makes it dependent upon Absolute experience. Another impor- 
tant divergence from Kant is to be noted. While Kant derives 
the knowledge of the categories by an empirical study of judg- 
ments, Fichte and Hegel attempt to arrive at them by the dia- 
lectical movement of thought itself. The Ego first posits itself. 
But it recognizes the non-Ego as its object of consciousness, 
which serves to give a content to the original Ego and produces 
a third Egohood, a subject-objectivity. This movement com- 
pletes itself in a logical way. Through the Ego positing itself 
we get, according to the principle of identity, the category of 
quality; by its opposing itself to the non-Ego we get, accord- 
ing to the principle of contradiction, the category of quantity; 
by uniting the two, Ego and non-Ego, we get, according to the 
principles of excluded middle and sufficient reason, the cate- 
gories of relation and modality. There is, then, a constant gene- 
sis of these categories. But why a genesis ? Because experience, 
according to Eichte, arises from an act that springs from a feel- 
ing of necessity. He demands that Ave must not observe what 
the consciousness does, but how it must act in order to gain 
experience. And Hegel assents to this, but attains the cate- 
gories through genesis of an absolute experience. Experience, 
then, in Eichte's and Hegel's philosophy is the same as in 
Kant's, but in its genesis and application the abyss between 



Xlll 



the duality of the phenomenal and noumenal world order is 
here done away with, the whole world being a manifestation 
of a noumenal mind. 

We have now come on to the period in the history of 
philosophy where no new theory of the concept of experience 
is advanced. As a result of the various theories of the concept 
we have learned the various methods whereby the concept of 
experience is attained. In order to close with the historical 
development of the concept of experience, we must also take 
account of the manner in which Herbart attempts to get at 
reality by treating of experience. Experiences, according to 
him, from whatever functions they may result, are a necessary 
precondition to knowledge. But we must not accept them at 
their face value. We must compare various experiences of 
the same sort and remove whatever contradictions, uncertainties 
or ambiguities may arise and thus gain a clear and distinct 
insight into the knowledge sought. 

The foregoing is an outline of the development of 
the concept of experience. It becomes now necessary to see what 
practical consequences this theory entails; for, after all, of 
what use are theories, if not practically applied in our conduct 
of life. For, since weight is placed upon the importance of the 
individual, we must take account of the practical application 
of every theory. The Pragmatism of to-day takes up this 
question. It tires of these theoretical subtleties. It claims that 
no theory in particular can stand a searching scrutiny. We 
must, after all, go back to the Empiricism of Hume. All 
knowledge resolves itself ultimately into belief and rightly so. 
We assume the truth as a practical necessity ex hypothesi. Ex- 
perience, no matter what the particular one may be, is the 
criterion of truth. We must observe what difference a certain 
experience, a certain state or content of consciousness produces, 
and if this difference is the same in every case of the same 
experience, we have a perfect right to assume and believe for 



XIV 



practical purposes that this experience gives the truth. Prag- 
matism, then, says that if your experience be the result of a 
sensuous intuition acting upon a passive mind (Empirical), or 
the synthesized intuitions by an active understanding (Criti- 
cal), or, again, the result of a fact-act, a unity of subject-objec- 
tivity (Fichte and Hegel's), it is practically the truth as long 
as it gives the same idea with each. test. 

With these preparatory remarks, we can begin the exposi- 
tion of our subject matter in detail: 

(1) To trace history of the concept of experience from 
the time it became a criterion of truth. 

(2) To show the motives which actuated the various 
thinkers in adopting experience as a criterion for estimating 
the validity of our knowledge of the world. 

(3) To show the growth of the concept, in the history 
of philosophy, as an organic one (each philosopher completing 
or building up his concept as a result of inadequacies he found 
in preceding philosophers — especially true in the Lockian and 
Kantian movement). 



The concept of experience receives its first scientific stamp 
in the Stoic i\xitEipia pteSodixrj as a npir-qpiov of truth. Al- 
though Aristotle speaks of Kpivdbv and Kpivovra*, it was not 
in the meaning of the Stoic criterion, for he speaks of it in 
connection with such idle questions as waking and sleeping. 
The Stoics demand sensuous distinctness in their mode of cog- 
nition, and this, they argue, arises from objects of experience. 
All knowledge, therefore, based upon this assertion arises from 
sensuous perceptions. The soul resembles a blank piece of 
paper, upon which representations are afterwards written by 
our senses. Experience, then, as a criterion of knowledge 
was Kara\rf7zrim) qjarraffia — the representation which, be- 
ing produced in us by the object, is able, as it were, to take 
hold or grasp ( Karakafifiav^iv ) that object. Zeno defines 
representation as an impression upon the soui(TV7rGjffi5 evipvxv) 
and Cleanthes compares it to the impression made upon a piece 
of wax; but Chryppopus opposes the definition of Zeno, taken 
in its literal sense, and himself defines qjavraaia as an altera 
tion in the soul {irepoicD(ji5 >/'vxf/s)' The cpavraaia itself 
is only a state ( na^^s) produced in the soul to which it 
announces both its existence and that of its object. They fur 
ther continue to argue that, through our perceptions of external 
objects and also of internal states, the originally vacant soul 
is filled with images, as if with written characters (Goanep 



* Metaphys. IV, 6. 



16 

X<xpTGov evepyov eh a7roypa(pr/r),2Ln& then the memory thereof 
remains behind. From the combination of similar memories 
arises experience as to tgdv ojuoeidoov 7tXrjBos. 

The concept is formed from single perceptions by general- 
ization, which may be either a spontaneous or unconscious 
(dre7riT€x vr / r o5) act or a conscious and methodical one ( 6i 
vjuerepas diSaffxaXias nai e7Tipe\eia5 ) ; so that in the former 
case "common ideas" or "anticipations" e'vvoim xowai or 
7rpo\?'/ipei5) are formed ; in the latter, concepts. Common ideas 
are general notions developed in the course of the nature of all 
men.* These ideas (although termed epiqjvroi 7tpo\?'fi}:ei3) 
were not viewed by the earlier Stoics at least as innate, but 
only as the natural outgrowth from perceptions. Rationality 
is a product of the progressing development of the individual; 
it is generally "agglomerated" ( Gwa^poi^Lrai ) out of his 
perceptions and representations until about the fourteenth year 
of life. It is only then that man is able to form concepts, judg- 
ments and syllogisms, for their formation depends on the ob- 
servance of certain rules, which he could not possibly grasp 
during the undeveloped stage. Here we have, for the first time 
in the history of philosophy, the exposition and the definition 
of the concept of experience. The elements entering into the 
making up of the concept are the idea of sensation of the 
functioning sense-organs and the idea of an activity in the 
mind called forth by the stimulus of the senses. This stimulus 
through the senses then gives rise to a self-realization of the 
consciousness of the individual. 

The Stoics, on the borderline of ancient thought, are the 
only philosophers who first defined and expounded a theory of 
the concept of experience both from a logical and a psychologi- 
cal standpoint. 



* Diog. L. VII, 54. 



17 

II. 

During the mediaeval period philosophy is assuming a 
theological character, and not until man began to adjust the 
disciplines to a scientific standard can we find the concept of 
experience in its growth. Toward the end of this period Wil- 
liam of Occam speaks of the concept oi experience from a logi- 
cal point of view. He argues that the fundamental principles 
of science are obtained from experience by induction. The 
concept of experience is defined by him as a process of percep- 
tion and thought regulated by norms of logic. The knowledge 
of whether a thing is or is not, Occam claims, we get by in- 
tuition. We can only gain the knowledge of the existence of 
individuals, not of universals, for these are general concepts 
formed in thought by abstraction. And in order to know the 
particular we must resort to experience. By judgment we can 
come into possession of knowledge. The act of judgment (actus 
judicativus), however, presupposes the act of apprehension 
(actus apprehensivus). Our states of consciousness as such we 
know by experience only; their essence, however, we cannot 
know, because experience cannot there be applied as a proof 
on behalf of an hypothesis. It is evident, then, why Occam 
affirms that science is the knowledge of the necessarily true, 
which knowledge can be generated by the agency of syllogistical 
thinking, whose fundamental principles are obtained from 
experience by induction. He does not show, however, how it is 
possible for apodictical knowledge to rest on the basis of expe- 
rience. Consequently he was not protected against the objec- 
tion of the subjective a priori philosophers, namely, that the 
principles on which the generalization of experience depends 
cannot themselves be derived from experience. From the above 
statements and from the fact that he relegates all knowledge 
transcending experience to the sphere of mere faith, we can 
see that the concept of experience begins to loom up in Occam's 
philosophy as a criterion of validity. 



18 

III. 

During the period extending from the Stoics to modern 
times the development of the concept of experience suffers a 
sort of hibernating slumber, only to awaken again in the earlier 
period of modern times. The first sign of it we find in the 
works of Paracelsus, the physician. He mentions the concept 
of experience in the words : Erf ahrung, Erf ahrenheit, Erf ahr- 
nuss and Experienz. These termini contain for him a theory 
of knowledge. 

The following will, however, prove that in one passage he 
regards experience as a logical concept and again places it out- 
side of philosophy. He says: "Das Experimentum ad fortem 
geht ohne die scientia ; aber Experimentia mit der Gewissheit 
wohin zu gebrauchen mit der scientia. Denn scientia ist die 
Mutter der Experienz. Ohne der scientia ist nichts da."* On 
the other hand, he says : "Also ist die Arzney im Anf ang gestan- 
den, dass keine Theorica gewesen ist, allein eine Erfahren- 
heit."t The termini Experientia and Experienz stand for 
the concept of experience (for they are spoken of in connection 
with scientific problems), while the terminus Erf ahrenheit 
stands for data of experience. 

During the period of independent and scientific research 
we find here and there a mention of experience, but not as a 
logical concept. Data of experience are here required from 
experiments in order to study the law of natural forces. Ex- 
perience becomes, however, the terminus a quo at all events and 
in this fact we find the true development of a subsequent 
criterion of all knowledge. It marks the period of Empiricism 
from the Stoic eunsipia up to Locke. It asserts that the 
method of philosophical enquiry is experiment, and philosophi- 
cal knowledge is limited to objects of experience. 



* Laoyr. Medicor. op. 6. 

t Commentaries on the Aphorisms of Hypocrates. 



19 

IV. 

The empirical school had its adherents in England, be- 
ginning with Bacon and ending with Locke's theory of knowl- 
edge ; in France with Condillac's sensualism, and in Germany 
with Hollbach's materialism. In Locke we find a truly scien- 
tific elaboration of the concept of experience. Under the con- 
cept of experience he understands the impressions upon our 
mind produced from objects which are received through the 
medium of the senses. In other words, sensuous experience is 
the sole basis of knowledge. And in this connection we may 
cite his famous dictum : "Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius 
fuerit in sensu."* It is in his "Essay Concerning the Human 
Understanding" that he sets out to elaborate the theory of hi3 
concept of experience. 

The profound nature of Locke's inquiry is here manifest. 
Rationalism is now to be subjected to a psychological examina- 
tion. The study of the nature of the mind becomes more impor- 
tant than that of the material world. The increasing volume 
of the mind, as it is fed by all the streams of sensibility, be- 
comes manifest and the study thereof gives an impetus to later 
investigations in Psychology. In undertaking this profound 
task Locke becomes the father of modern Psychology. 

Now, we have seen above what Locke understands by ex- 
perience. Is there any part of experience which is native to 
the mind and not derived from outside ? Locke answers in 
the negative. 

It becomes necessary, before leading up to the discussion 
of the theory of experience as a source of our ideas, to examine 
the false pretensions of Rationalism by carefully looking into 
the facts of consciousness and the manner in which our ideas 
originate. This relates to the supposed existence of innate ideas. 
"When men have found some genera!, propositions that could 



* Locke, Eesay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chap. I, 24. 



20 

not be doubted of as soon as understood, it was a short and easy 
way to conclude them innate."* The second step in the ex- 
planation of the theory of the concept of experience is to estab- 
lish the empirical explanation of experience. 

Locke refutes the theory of innate ideas (xoiral evvoiai). 
If ideas are innate, they are a mystery not to be investigated 
or explained. He argues against this theory by taking the 
example of the consciousness or mind of a child, idiot and 
savage. Is the principle of contradiction, for instance (which, 
according to Rationalism, is innate and necessary to experi- 
ence), already existing in the mind of the infant, whose at- 
tainments go no further than the ability to scream when it is 
uncomfortable ?f 

If, however, it is argued that these ideas are dormant in 
the minds of new-born men and become exhibited in conscious- 
ness as the reason matures, it would be tantamount to saying 
that reason makes men know what they knew already. If mathe- 
matical truths are innate, all relations of space and time must 
be so equally; if self-evident propositions are innate, then 
such truths as that sweet is not bitter, black is not white, must 
bs innate also. If, however, the human child does not come 
into the world with an inborn treasure of certainties, truths and 
conceptions, where then is the true origin, the only primary 
source of all our ideas and knowledge to be sought? 

The answer is: In experience alone, which we receive 
through the gates of our senses. Or, as quoted above, "Is"ihil 
est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu."$ 

The soul is originally a tabula rasa,§ a blank sheet of paper 



* Op. Cit., Book I, Chap. IV, 24. 
t Book I, Chap. Ill, 2. 
t Book II, Chap. I, 2. 
§ Book II, Chap. I, 24. 



21 

upon which sensations are written at will. The end organs are 
the avenues conducting them to the mind. Thus ideas are 
created. The soul is as little able to create for itself ideas 
out of nothing or to destroy those which have been framed 
as man is to create or destroy the smallest mote in the sunbeam. 
No idea of color can be given to the blind or of sound to 
the deaf. 

Reflection is opposed to sensation. The latter is experience 
of the external world, the former of the inner one, namely, 
a mental state. But even internal reflection would be impossi- 
ble if sensation did not first stimulate this state of mind. The 
mind in this state is sometimes active, sometimes passive. Per- 
ception is the representation of things external given by sensible 
impressions. The mind in this is purely passive ; it is as power- 
less to escape or alter these impressions as a mirror to change 
the impressions made in it. It is, therefore, an attenuated 
form of external experience. Retention is the revival of former 
representations, and the mind in this is not wholly passive. 
There is a natural defect of the human mind associated with 
the faculty of recollection, namely, that the latter only recalls 
its objects in a succession or by an association. " Although 
we may conceive some superior, created, intellectual beings, 
which in the faculty may have constantly in view the whole 
scene of all their former actions, wherein no one of the thoughts 
they have ever had may slip out of their sight,* the human 
mind has no such power. 

All the functions of the senses belong also to the lower ani- 
mals. The highest attribute of reason, however, of which lower 
animals are bereft, is to compare, distinguish, unite and sepa- 
rate ; and in this the human mind far surpasses that of brutes 
in virtue of the gift of abstraction, or universal notions, which 
he alone possesses. In acquiring experience the mind, as we 



* Essay, Book I, Chap. Ill, 26. 



22 

Lave seen, is passive. But in the higher processes of reason 
and understanding, which are stimulated by the material of 
perception, the mind becomes active. 

In all this we see a general outline of the analysis of men- 
tal operations and their dependence on the world of sense. 
Through this analysis of the nature of our knowledge Locke 
then is led to draw another important distinction between sen- 
sations and the real essential qualities of bodies — or the dis- 
tinction between primary and secondary qualities of bodies. 
If we can only learn by experience of the external world as 
much as affections of our senses tell us, it becomes a question 
how much of the data of experience are due to this subjective 
element, and must be allowed for accordingly, if we wish to 
attain to knowledge of the thing as it is in itself. It is 
obvious, for instance, that the sweetness of sugar exists in our 
palate, heat, light, color are feelings in me, but they do not 
constitute the qualities in things, and can only be regarded 
as the effects produced by the objects on our organs of sense. 
What then are the qualities pertaining to things in themselves ? 
Obviously these primary and original qualities which are in- 
separable from the idea of matter are the same under all cir- 
cumstances, and present in the smallest atoms such qualities 
as, for instance, solidity, extension, figure, position and number 
of parts, motion, etc. "These ideas of primary qualities of 
bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns directly 
exist in the bodies themselves ; but the ideas, produced in us 
by secondary qualities, have no resemblance to them at all. 
There is nothing like some of our ideas existing in the bodies 
themselves. The bodies are only the power to produce those 
sensations in us, and what is sweet, bine, or warm in idea, is 
but the certain bulk, figure and motion of the insensible parts 
in the bodies themselves which affect us in particular ways.'' 



* Essay, Book IT, Chap. VIIT, 9, 10. 



23 

These primary qualities are also derived by sensation, but 
not modified by it. 

Of space and time, lie says, we obtain an idea by experi- 
ence, namely, sight and touch. These stock ideas are capable of 
innumerable modifications and this ieads us to the idea of 
infinity. The position of an object can only be determined in 
relation to something else. Without space neither solidity nor 
motion is possible ; but the latter, the true qualities of matter, 
differ toto coelo from space. As to time, he argues, we reach 
the conception of it by reflecting upon our feelings and thoughts 
in the order in which they succeed each other in the mind; 
without perceptions, we should not have the idea or duration of 
time. The idea of succession cannot be derived from motion; 
on the contrary, the latter has to be translated into mental 
sequence. As the idea of space, so does the idea of time con- 
duct us to that of infinity, i.e., to the idea of eternity. 

The ideas of liberty we get from the inner experience of our 
will — a mental inclination to choose. 

About the idea of material and immaterial substance Locke 
says: They are something which we imagine underlying and. 
supporting, now the sensible, perceptible properties of external 
objects, now the forms of consciousness which we perceive as 
states. But what this thing may be, we know as little in the 
one case as in the other. Forces and effects constitute the 
major part of our ideas of substance. So that what little we 
know of them we get from experience by hypothesis. But 
while we cannot possibly conceive the production of these 
effects, we have constant experience of all our voluntary motions 
as produced in us by the free action or thought of our own 
minds only. In a word, nil our ide^.s of substance are but 
"collections of simple ideas with a supposition of something to 
which thev belong and in which thev subsist."* 



* Essay, Book II, Chap. XXITE 



24 

The complex ideas he divides into three classes : Modes, re- 
lations and substances. Our daily experience of the alterations 
in external things, the observation of the constant change of 
ideas in our mind, depending partly on external impressions, 
partly on our choice, leads the human understanding to the 
conclusion that the same changes that have been observed will 
also take place in future in the same manner and through the 
same causes. Receiving impressions is, as above stated, passive 
power, and reflecting upon them in our minds is active power. 
And by combining the two processes we get a clear concept. 
Internal experience teaches us that by mere volition we can 
set our body in motion. Will is, therefore, a cause to effect a 
purpose. So we get the ideas of causal relations and other rela- 
tions by experience. 

In this way Locke proceeds to refer the origin of all knowl- 
edge to ideas, which constitute our experience. It may seem 
that he is trying to attain to practical rather than to scientific 
or theoretical ends. But the thoroughness with which he deals 
shows that w T e have here, for the first time in history, the con- 
cept of experience fully developed. Besides differentiating 
primary from secondary qualities of things, another merit of his 
was also the profound insight into the nature of general ideas 
and the connection between them and language, a result also of 
the development of the concept of experience. Let us see how 
he does it. 

The faculty of abstraction and the general ideas arising 
from it are proper to man alone and form the true nature of his 
reason. Abstraction is the faculty of generalizing under a cer 
tain name the ideas received from individual things. Every- 
thing that has to do with the real existence of these single 
things, such as time and place and other concomitant qualities, 
must be separated, and the idea alone presented to the under- 
standing apart and made applicable, under a particular name, 
to all the things in which it is met. The same color which 



25 

I perceive in milk, in snow and in other objects becomes, 
under the name, white ; in general, an idea for the color of all 
things which produce it at any time. But the origin of all 
general ideas is to be found in sensible perceptions.* The 
simple ideas thence derived cannot be defined, iNo explana- 
tion will convey any idea to the blind. Words cannot help, 
for they are only sounds. To endeavor with words to make 
any one who has not had the experience of the sensations 
realize the taste of an apple, or its red and white color, is the 
same as trying to make sound visible and color audible, or rather 
to make hearing a substitute for all other senses. All imma- 
terial ideas are originally taken by metaphor from ideas of 
sensible perception.f When Locke says: "What a vast variety 
of different ideas does the word triumphus hold together and 
deliver to us as one species/'i he refers to the fact that it 
includes the utmost variety of objects, furnished by the wid- 
est experience. 

Saving now followed up Locke's development and expo- 
sition of the concept of experience, it may not be out of place 
to note the essentials and limitations in his theory. 

To the essential and novel additions to philosophic thought 
belonar the following truths : 

1. The conception that general ideas are true objects of 
thought and that they are perfected in men by abstraction is 
an intimation that there is a connection between them and 
language ; the statement of the problem as to the origin of true 
ideas and the tracing them back to sensible impressions is the 
indication of the connection between sense and reason. 

2. Since all our ideas and thoughts proceed from indi- 
vidual perception or contact with the external world, the idea 
of substance is inaccessible to human knowledge. 



* Essay, Book II, Chap. II. 

t Essay, Book III, Chaps. Ill and IV. 

t Essay, Book III, Chap. V. 



26 

3. The distinction between our sensible impressions and 
the true qualities of objects — between primary and secondary 
qualities — points to a future limitation of our knowledge to 
objects of experience. 

The necessary limitation of all knowledge follows : 

1. The hesitation of Locke between individualism pure 
and simple , which can only conceive things as they are given 
by senses and imagination and can therefore never go beyond 
its subjective standpoint, and the assumption of an objective 
world actually existing in itself in space and time* is apparent 
throughout his argument. 

2. This indecision prevented Locke from entering upon a 
more thorough investigation of the nature of reason, and 
from showing what nature and characteristics have grown 
up and been developed through the reception of sense impres- 
sions. To Locke the mind appears as originally a dark room, 
into which rays of light from the outer world penetrate by 
certain rifts and cracks, and so increase and complete the think- 
ing faculty. The active side of this faculty, however, is much 
neglected and often entirely overlooked. 

3. Thus the whole function of thought and rational knowl- 
edge appears as a process affected from and by the world of 
sense without. In representing the law of causality as a product 
of experience, Locke suggested Hume's doubt and gave rise to 
the profound investigations of Kant. 

4. Locke's profound and important view that general ideas 
are true objects of thought was not as much utilized and de- 
veloped by him as the importance of the subject and the sim- 
plicity of the principle allowed and required. It was necessary, 



* I, as an individual, am fixed and determined as the subject of knowl- 
edge, and it is impossible that I should know the finite object in itself, much 
less the infinite. I can only know either of these indirectly, in so far as 
they come within the range of my consciousness, in so far as they are repre- 
sented in my sensations and my thoughts. Schopenhauer, World as will- and 
idea. Book I, Chap. V. 



27 

and he himself held it to be the chief task of philosophy, to ex- 
amine carefully into the origin of ideas not from sense-percep- 
tion and self -observation alone; the origin of ideas from pre- 
ceding ideas as revealed in the history of human language 
should have been set forth, too. It is true that in the age of 
Locke such an undertaking would have been difficult, as the 
Science of Language did not yet exist. Otherwise Locke would 
have had to surrender his erroneous belief that man can form 
ideas from words which are only the conventional signs for ideas 
already existing in thought.* 

Clearer knowledge on this point would have enabled Locke 
to define the concepts of thought and of ideas far more sharply, 
and he would not then have ascribed to mere sense impressions 
the character and value of ideas. "It is certain that the mind 
is able to retain and receive distinct ideas long before it has 
the use of words, or before it comes to that, which we commonly 
call the use of reason. For a child knows as certainly, before 
it can speak, the difference between the ideas of sweet and bitter, 
as it knows afterwards that wormwood and sugar plums are 
not the same thing. "f Schopenhauer clearly refutes Locke 
that ideas are originated in partibus orationis when he says : 
"It is very surprising that no philosopher has yet traced all the 
various manifestations of reason back to one simple function, 
which might be recognized in them all, by which they might 
all be explained and which would therefore be seen to constitute 
the proper inner nature of reason. The admirable Locke, in- 
deed, describes abstract universal ideas quite rightly as marking 
the distinction between man and beast, and Leibnitz repeats 
this with complete assent. But when Locke comes, in his fourth 
book, to examine reason itself, he loses sight of this chief char- 
acteristic altogether, and falls into a hesitating, indefinite, frag- 
mentary expression of incomplete and second hand opinion."! 

* Max Mueller, Lectures on Science of Language II, P. 75. 
t Essay, Book I, Chap. I. 
r t Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Pp. 45, 566-70. 



28 

At the same time Locke's concept of experience as a source 
of ideas has an important bearing on the future philosophy, 
and this is duly recognized by Schopenhauer in the following 
passage: "Locke was the first to proclaim the great doctrine 
that a philosopher who wishes to prove or derive anything 
from ideas must first investigate the origin of these ideas 
as to their content, and everything thence deducible must be 
determined by their origin as the source of all knowledge obtain- 
able through them. 7 '* 

V. 

In his discussion of the theory of experience Locke had 
shown that certain qualities considered objective were due to 
the mind, but he still retained certain primary qualities which, 
while stamped upon the mind, are also present in the objects. 
Hume, although adopting Locke's theory of the concept of expe- 
rience, brushes away the remaining cobwebs of dogmatism in 
his theory and carries it to its extreme conclusion by denying 
the possibility of anything which is not sensuous experience or 
derived from it. Every possible object of knowledge he reduced 
either to an impression or an idea. "The difference between 
these consists in the degree of force and liveliness with which 
they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought 
or consciousness. Those perceptions, which enter with most 
force and violence, we may name impressions ; and under this 
name I comprehend, Hume says, all our sensations, passions 
and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul." 
"By ideas I mean the faint image of these in thinking and 
reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited 
by the present discourse, excepting only those which arise from 
the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure or 
uneasiness it may occasion."f 



* Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, P. 570. 
t Hume, Treatise of the Human Nature, Book I, Part I, L. 



29 

Hume reaffirms Locke's theory of simple and complex 
ideas and the fact that they are ultimately traced to single 
perceptions. These impressions and ideas are the sole contents 
of the human mind. And if we are to establish the reality of 
a fact, we must be able to trace it back to a concrete impression, 
which it reproduces. No matter how much we may try to fix 
our attention out of ourselves, we never really can advance a 
step beyond ourselves, nor can we conceive any kind of exist- 
ence but those perceptions which have appeared in that narrow 
compass. 

On this ground Hume denies the existence of substance, 
or rather the fact that we can have any knowledge of it, if it 
exists at all. We cannot form any idea about it, because it is 
not given to us through sense-impression. It cannot be derived 
from reflection, because impressions of reflection resolve them- 
selves into our passions and emotions, none of which can possi- 
bly represent a substance. 

The idea of substance, therefore, it nothing but a collection 
of simple ideas of qualities that are united by the imagination.* 
He not only denies the existence of the material substance, but 
also of the spiritual substance, the self, because we cannot get 
an idea of it from sensuous impressions. Hume says, that, 
when he enters most intimately into what he calls himself, 
he always stumbles on some particular perception or other, of 
heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure, 
but never can catch himself at any time without a perception 
and never can observe anything but the perception. 

His most important contribution to philosophy was the 
analysis of the idea of causality. There seems to be an all-per- 
vading relation which stands between ideas and our self, that 
makes knowledge possible, namely, the relation of cause and 
effect. Here again he demands : what is the impression from 



* Book I, Part I, 6. 



30 

which the idea of cause is derived V* An impinging ball will 
cause the motion in the other, but we cannot perceive any other 
causal relation between the action of the ball and our mind. 
We find such relations present as contiguity and succession and 
from these perhaps the idea of relation must be derived. But 
these do not exhaust causation, for an idea may be contiguous 
and prior to another without being considered as its cause. 
We may now add the idea of necessary connection. But then 
where is the impression from which this idea can be derived? 
Hume, therefore, throws out the idea of necessity and with 
it the idea of causality. We can only get knowledge of things 
that are given us in our sensuous experience. The question 
now is: Since there is no causal relation and everything is in 
constant flux, how do we come to imagine that we have things 
before us, and that they affect each other ? How do we know 
that a chair is not a table ? Hume answers, that it is due to our 
habit of constantly associating certain ideas with the various 
impressions, and thereby we are enabled to recognize the ob- 
jects on account of their similarity to those ideas arrived at 
during past experiences. The relation then that stands be- 
tween us and the world is the constant conjunction of ideas, 
the force of custom or habit. 

Hume comes then to the conclusion, (1) that the basis of all 
knowledge is an experience which contains no a priori factors 
(to use Kant's expression), but is solely impression, and (2) 
that he must consequently deny the existence of ideas such as 
substance and causality, as they are extra-experiential and there- 
fore unwarranted. 

The influence that Hume exerted on Kant is evident from 
the following: 

(1) The negation of the idea of the self and the idea of 
causality and the attributing of these ideas to habit aroused 
Kant from his dogmatic slumber. 



* Book I, Part III, 2. 



31 

(2) Hume's consistency in denying in his account of ex- 
perience the objective existence of substance and causality 
aroused in Kant the need of supplementing that account and 
deriving substance and causality from non-empirical sources.* 
These destructive criticisms in the theory of Hume make him 
the proper stepping stone to Kant's philosophy. 



VI. 

This leads us to the consideration of Kant's concept of ex- 
perience. He treats the concept of experience manifestly in a 
different way from Locke. 

"All knowledge, he avers, begins with experience, but not 
all knowledge springs from experience. "f (Locke had said, 
all knowledge springs from experience.) In this sentence the 
concept of experience manifests itself as the problem, the solu- 
tion of which is the business of the Critique of Pure Reason. 
Kant discovered, as it were, a new phase of the concept of ex- 
perience, one which Locke and Hume had denied. And it de- 
pends solely upon the precise form and content of this concept, 
that he should reconcile the legitimate demands of the sceptical 
Empiricism and the dogmatism of Pure Reason. 

Experience, to him, is a continuous combination of sensu- 
ous intuitions — a synthesis by the understanding, which elabo- 
rates the raw material of sensation. !Now, by abstracting 
the work of the understanding from this concept, there re- 
mains sensation. In studying the component parts of sen- 
sation, Kant found it to consist of a material and formal 
element. There are sensations, such as color, tone, etc., 
but they appear in certain forms. These forms are those 
of space and time. These formal elements, however, are both 



* Kant, Prolegomena, Preface. 

t Intro., Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, I. 



32 

pure intuitions, a priori, and not derived from experience, 
for experience will show us that space and time exist, but it 
will never show us that these are a conditio sine qua non of in- 
tuition. Experience tells us, indeed, that something is, but not 
that it must necessarily be so and not otherwise.* Space and 
time cannot be removed from external objects or events, for in 
order to gain the impression of the external world, we must 
have the intuition of space and time as a conditio sine qua non. 
It would be a wrong experience from which space and time are 
borrowed. iNo experience is sufficient to give us space and 
time, which are the formal elements of all sensations. These 
forms can be compared with a sort of colored spectacles, through 
which we must look all the time, in order to get hold of the 
world around us. Without them we would be totally blind. 
Space and time, then, are given to us as a priori forms of all 
intuitions. 

The second half of the sentence, as quoted above, begins 
with a "but" ; "but not all knowledge springs from experi- 
ence." The significance of this is apparent, for there is a mani- 
fest difference between begin and spring. All knowledge begins 
in relation to space and time. There is only a nporepov or 
" arepov rpos r/^tds but no nporepov anXcoS. Here Kant's ac- 
count of experience differentiates itself in a very marked degree 
from that of Locke. There may be a more or less complicated 
cause of knowledge. And this cause can only be in the suc- 
cession of my experience as it is synthesized by the mind. The 
causal nexus is not a mere association, as Hume had affirmed. 
So that, while all knowledge begins necessarily with associa- 
tions of sensuous intuitions, we may find an heterogeneous 
arrangement in mere association and no intelligible knowledge 
as yet. The additional aspect of transformation necessary we 
shall consider presently. 



* Critique of Pure Reason, Intro., Part III. 



33 

The sensuous intuitions of space and time, — which are a 
priori forms, — constitute the passive receptivity of the mind. 
All phenomena are put into these forms. This form of expe- 
rience alone, however, conveys no intelligent knowledge. It is 
the combination of this given material with the spontaneous 
activity of the understanding, elaborating these intuitions by 
its categories or laws that produce experience, from which 
knowledge springs. One factor in the make-up of experience 
without the other is of no value ; both factors are necessary. 
This he particularly illustrates in the sentence: "Thoughts 
without contents (sensuous intuitions) are empty, intuitions 
without concepts are blind."* Without either of these, thoughts 
would be meaningless and knowledge impossible. The under- 
standing can perceive nothing and the sense can think nothing. 
All sensations depend upon affections of the senses and all con- 
cepts upon the functioning understanding. From the work of 
the understanding through its categories upon the intuitions 
does experience arise. The a priori forms of the mind thus 
become the root of our knowledge and the universal and neces-. 
sary in the world depend upon this factor of experience (which 
is itself not derived from experience) . In this way experience 
loses its old meaning in the sense of Locke (tabula rasa; 
passivity). "Experience, therefore, is produced by the under- 
standing out of the raw materials of sensation. f In this sen- 
tence we have both sources of experience, its beginning in sensa- 
tion and its springing from understanding. Through the first 
process of external experience, objects are given to us, through 
the second process of inner experience objects are known by us. 
Intuitions and understanding supplement each other in the 
formation of experience. The inchoate matter of feeling given 
through sense perception receives its form from the a priori 
concepts of the understanding, and the world of conscious 



* Critique of Pure Reason, P. 41, Muellers Trans. 

t Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic, passim. 



34 

experience arises. True cognition a priori therefore implies 
experience in order to be of any value at all, while experience 
in so far as it is necessary and universal (in other words ob- 
jectively valid) implies cognition a priori. In this way Kant 
reconciles Rationalism and Empiricism. The activity of the 
mind is exerted validly only upon experience, and experience 
is possible only by means of a system of pure conceptions, con- 
ditioned by an a priori unity, or, in other words, through pure 
reason. 

Now to develop some of the above points in detail, Kant's 
theory of knowledge falls into three divisions. 

1. The transcendental aesthetic, dealing with sensibility, 
the receptive element, which intuites the, as yet, blind matter 
of sensation under the forms of space and time ; 

2. The transcendental analytic, treating of the under- 
standing, the active element, which contributes to the material 
furnished by sense, its own categories or conceptions ; 

3. The transcendental dialetic, concerning itself with the 
Pure Reason, which through its ideas tries to extend the con- 
ditioned, actual experience, attained by means of the senses and 
the understanding. 

At the outset let us say, that Kant in speaking of the 
understanding, alludes to it as the unity of the functions of the 
mind. The function of the understanding; is to construct ex- 
perience or cognitions out of intuitions. This it effects by im- 
posing upon them its pure conceptions, the categories, or, in 
Kant's own language, subsuming the forms containing the per- 
ceptions (viz, space ais t d time) under these. Perception, 
he says, which is purely subjective, merely presupposes the 
primitive unity of the consciousness together with the laws of 
the connection of perceptions therein. Knowledge, cognition 
or experience, on the contrary, which passes beyond the mere 
subjective connection of sensations, ascribing objective reality 



35 

and a definite objective order to the presentations contained in 
them, presupposes the categories. 

The first part of the Critique giving us formal conditions 
of sense-experience, was spoken of above. The second section, 
giving us the categories as forms of thought, we will now dis- 
cuss. 

How did Kant discover the categories as the formal condi- 
tions of experience ? In the same manner in which he recog- 
nized space and time as a priori forms of intuition; in remov- 
ing the constitutive elements, which we put into objects, from 
these constituents, which form the material part of experience. 
It doubtless, therefore, appears that the a priorism is known 
through reflection upon that which we possess in experience. 
It certainly could not be different, for the first sentence, "All 
knowledge begins with experience/' shows it conclusively. 
When Kant asks, "How are synthetic judgments a priori possi- 
ble ?" he answers that the possibility depends upon the syn- 
thetic unity which we put into the things. This synthetic unity 
manifests itself in the categories. The categories are to be un- 
derstood as a priori from a three-fold aspect, namely: (1) they 
are called a priori as concepts of the understanding, (.2) as 
such they are separate from the elements of knowledge, and 
(3) after intuitions are subsumed under them, they become 
forms of experience. Thus Kant conceives them apart from 
any empirical cognition and yet claims for them an objective 
validity, resting this claim, as above, on the fact that it is only 
through them that experience in what concerns the forms of 
thought is possible, and so they relate a priori to objects of 
experience.* 

How, then, does the mind transform sense-experience into 
knowledge by means of the categories ? By subsuming the 
intuition under the categories. This subsumption occurs in the 



* Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Deduct, of the Categories 
Section, passim. 



36 

form of judgments. Experience, in fact, is a series of judg- 
ments. For instance, when we say, This is red, we pronounce 
a judgment. There are certain laws, then, which prescribe the 
course which the categories must follow. It would be wrong 
to say that this red color is long or short, or that the hardness 
of the table lasts five minutes, putting it in relation to time. In 
order that we may judge intelligently we are bound to adhere 
to certain rules of the understanding, e. g., the axioms of intui- 
tion, which say, that all phenomena are, with reference to their 
intuition, extensive quantities ; anticipations of perception, 
which say that the principle which anticipates all perceptions 
as such is this : In all phenomena sensation, and the Real which 
corresponds to it in the object (realitas phenomenon), has an 
intensive quantity, that is, a degree ; the analogies of experience, 
the general principle of which is : All phenomena, as far as 
their existence is concerned, are subject a priori to rules, de- 
termining their mutual relation in one and the same time, etc. * 

In considering the elements of experience we found that 
one of these was sensuous intuition, and that the categories had 
their function in transforming these intuitions into knowledge. 
We shall also find that for us the categories have no meaning 
unless applied either to sense experience or to possible expe- 
rience. The concepts of the understanding, to repeat, are ap- 
plicable only to objects of sensible intuition, for a faculty of 
non-sensible or intellectual intuition is not possessed by man. 
The noumenon, an object of neither sensible nor internal per- 
ception, is not to be known through the categories. 

While it is outside of the province of the subject to con- 
sider the noumenon, still, as putting a limit upon our knowl- 
edge, it is important to refer to it. By the noumenon, Kant 
means (1) the unknown substratum of experience, a substratum 
which being outside of space and time (since these are sub- 



* Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic, P. 136. 



37 

jective), cannot, therefore, be known; (2) ideas which the 
metaphysical faculty present in mankind, has assumed, as ulti- 
mate in the world, — ideas which since they are not verifiable or 
applicable to experience cannot be known by the categories of 
knowledge. These ideas are the soul, the world as a totality, 
and Gocl. 

In studying the philosophies of Locke, Hume and Kant, 
we saw the concept of experience interpreted in a twofold man- 
ner. In Locke as sensuous intuition and in Kant as a product 
of the understanding acting upon sensuous intuition. The 
latter extended Locke's conception of experience by showing 
that intuitions are not yet experience, and it is not until the 
activities of the mind develop the impressions that experience 
arises. Kant, in the words of Hegel, would, however, be an 
impossibility without Locke : "Kant's idealistische Seite, welche 
dem Subjecte gewisse Yerhaeltnisse, die Kategorien heissen, 
vindiciert, ist nichts als die Erweiterimg des Lockianismus."* 

The foregoing is an exposition of Kant's concept of ex- 
perience, as I understand it to be. This treatise contains the 
most salient features of his doctrine on that subject. It shall 
now be my privilege to point out various inconsistencies and 
limitations of his theory. 

1. He is not clear on the point, as to whether his cate- 
gories are functions or activities, or whether they are structural 
forms of the mind. As Schopenhauer points out, there are 
passages intended to be elucidatory in which the distinction 
sought to be established is so wiredrawn as to be hardly in- 
telligible. 

2. Feberwegf and VolkeltJ rightly object, that Kant 
in excluding the formal conditions of experience from the 
Ding-an-sich, does not positively prove the incognizability of 



* Hegels Werke, Vol. I, P. 31. 

t Ueberweg, Gesch. der Philosophie, Bd. Ill, P. 185. 

t Volkelt, Kant's Erkenntnisstheorie, Pp. 40-50. 



38 

the latter. In asserting that space and time, inasmuch as they 
are forms of sensibility, cannot obtain in objects as things-in- 
themselves, he is assuming a dogmatic attitude with regard to 
it. On the other hand, it cannot be disputed that the basis of 
our knowledge is a space and time of our own, and Kant is 
right in saying that the world of noumena is not in this world 
of space and time (because that is subjective). 

3. Against the Critique of Pure Reason, as undertaken 
by Kant, it has been objected, that thought can only be scru- 
tinized by thought, and that to seek to examine the nature of 
thought antecedent to all real thinking, is like attempting to 
swim before going into water!* 

4. His statement, that space is a necessary a priori notion, 
because it is impossible to form a notion of non-existence of 
space, is no proof of its being a priori. 

5. Kant has not sufficiently justified the double use, 
which he makes of space, time and the categories, in that he 
treats them, on the one hand, as mere forms or ways of con- 
necting the material given in experience, and yet, undeniably, 
on the other hand, also treats them as something material, viz. : 
as the matter or content of thought from which we form 
synthetic judgments a priori. 

6. That space is only the form of the external and not 
the internal sense, and that time, per contra, is the form of 
the internal, and indirectly, also of the external sense, are 
truths to be inferred, in Kant's opinion, from the nature of 
external and internal experience. But in fact to space belong 
no less, "phenomena of internal sense," images of perception 
as such, representations of memory, conceptions, in so far as 
the concrete representations from which they are abstracted 
constitute their inseparable basis, and therefore to the judg- 
ments combined from them, in so far as that, to which the 



* Hegel, Smaller Logic, Introduction. 



39 

judgment relates, is also intuitively (through the sensibility) 
represented. 

VII. 

So far it is evident that both Locke and Kant agree upon, 
the fact that experience is the basis of knowledge. But knowl- 
edge of what ? of phenomena. Locke maintains that we can 
know objects through the experience of our senses and that 
knowledge is limited to objects of sense only. Kant tells us 
that we can know only phenomena and that the knowledge of 
them is valid only in as much as we can verify it in an actual 
or a possible experience. But noumena, things-in-themselves, 
we cannot know, because they transcend the sphere of ex- 
perience. 

Hegel and Herbart, however, contend, that the knowl- 
edge of the noumena is accessible to us through experience. 
In this fact lies their importance. The concept of experience 
assumes an enlarged aspect in the theories of these philosophers 
and we shall now proceed to consider them in detail. 

Before considering these we must turn to Fichte, who rep- 
resents the extreme development of Kantianism on the sub- 
jective or psychological side. 

Fichte, in his Science of Knowledge, draws forth into 
light the concealed mechanism by means of which conscious- 
ness is realized. Llis theory rests on a first principle in 
which the matter and the form of knowledge so condition each 
other that that principle requires no other to condition it as 
regards form and content. There are two aspects to conscious- 
ness, the objective or empirical and the subjective. Kant took 
up the analysis of experience as a product of our activities. 
But what about the process of the mind in the making of con- 
sciousness ? Fichte investigated our mode of action in the 
conscious process. 

Beginning then with the subject, Fichte maintains, that 



40 

the Ego first posits itself, then the non-Ego acts on the Ego 
and through this reciprocal activity consciousness arises. This 
is a state or form pins a content or matter. Neither would have 
a meaning without the other, nor could knowledge arise with- 
out the interaction of the Ego upon the non-Ego. The most 
primitive act he assumes to be that by which the unity of the 
subjective and objective is posited, and he describes this in his 
First Principle as follows : The Ego posits absolutely its being. 
He requires that a conception be thought, and then that we 
observe not what one does when one thinks, but what one must 
do; here it will be discovered that what is contained in thought, 
or, rather, precedes it as a conditio sine qua non, is a self- 
positing or self.* The essential thing is that the absolute, 
not individual, Ego be conceived as a pure act (not as some- 
thing active), as pure or absolute knowledge (neither as a know- 
ing or as a known somewhat), as the self -penetration, for 
which there is no other word than Ego-hood. To bring to con- 
sciousness this Ego-hood underlying every Ego is therefore 
something entirely different from mere self -observation ; it is 
rather an intellectual intuition before which one's own being 
vanishes, and which makes its appearance, not as being, but 
as act. 

To understand the foregoing technical accounts of Fichte, 
we must see how he agreed with and differed from Kant. 
Both accepted experience as the subject of investigation. But 
Kant took experience as an organized structure, and by means 
of analysis attempted to arrive at the universal forms which 
made experience possible. Thus, while his categories were a 
priori forms of the understanding, they were discovered em- 
pirically by analysis. Fichte, on the other hand, did not take 
experience for granted at the start, but only the existence of 
the self or Ego. Thus, he said, the Ego posits itself, meaning 



* Fichte, Science of Knowledge, Part II, Section 1. 



41 

it is a primary fact. ISTow what does this imply? That the 
Ego is the conditio sine qua non of all experience. He pro- 
ceeds from this self, which must be present in all experience 
and yet not be limited by it. We have said before that ex- 
perience is a reciprocal activity between the self and the con- 
tent, that is between the state, as such, and the content of con- 
sciousness. This constant activity then suggests Heraclitus' 
flux of things. Now if we abstract in thought from this active 
consciousness the form or state, we have, what Fichte terms, 
the absolute self, the universal Ego, the permanence in this 
flux. If we say, that because the Ego is posited by itself, it 
therefore is, we abstract the Ego from the subject — object 
(the thinking individual). This constitutes the content of the 
law of thought. Since categories are laws of the Ego, valid 
only so far as they apply to objects, reality is given to an 
object only by its being posited by the Ego; i.e., thought under 
the laws or categories of the Ego. 

The Second Principle is introduced in a manner entirely 
similar to that in which the First was introduced, that is to 
say, originally in a descriptive form, later in the form of a 
postulate. In the descriptive form it runs as follows. To the 
Ego is opposed the non-Ego (as content of consciousness) ; in 
the form of a postulate it is required to bring the original 
opposition of Ego and non-Ego into consciousness. Although 
outside of ichat takes place by the positing act, nothing new 
enters, there does enter something new as regards the way in 
which it takes place. Eichte calls the act itself, and likewise 
the principle that formulates it, conditioned as regards content 
and unconditioned as regards form.* Just for that reason, also, 
is the product of this act designated by the expression non- 
Ego, which indicates something in a relation. That is, the Ego 
deals with a content that stands over against it. At the same 



* Fichte, Science of Knowledge, Part III, Section IV. 



42 

time were it not for the Ego, that content would not exist. The 
content Fichte calls the non-Ego. As the fact of its existence 
is dependent upon the Ego, he calls the non-Ego conditioned 
in form by the Ego and unconditioned in its matter, because 
the Ego finds a certain opposition between itself and the non- 
Ego, an opposition not due to a difference of form between the 
self and the not-self. 

If these two postulates (the posited Ego and the non-Ego) 
are granted, the Third, the combination of the two, follows of 
itself, without, however, the identity of consciousness being lost 
sight of. Since these two annul each other, the act which shall 
combine the positing of the Ego and its opposite the (non-Ego) 
must consist in a reciprocal partial negation or limitation of 
each by the other. 

If, therefore, the postulate of this partial negation be 
carried into effect, there results an act which Fichte describes 
thus : There is a reciprocal activity between the Ego and non- 
Ego, both uniting into an active consciousness (the subject- 
objectivity). This consciousness, therefore, involves a duality 
— best expressed in the German Urtheil — a state or form on 
the one hand, a content on the other, and a consequent syn- 
thesis of this duality forming a unity of an active conscious- 
ness, with a content therein. The First Principle of Fichte, 
therefore, is analogous to the thinker, who is unconditioned by 
the content, — the object. The Second Principle is analogous 
to thought, which is limited partially by the thinker and 
partially by the object. And the Third Principle is analogous 
to consciousness, — of which the other two phases are only ab- 
stractions, which can only arise when the thinker actually 
thinks and purposely wants to know something. And with it 
the circle of possible principles is exhausted. Reflection upon 
the form of this principle should yield first the law of thought 
of the Ground ; and because Ground (of relation and distinc- 
tion) lies only in the partial coincidence and falling asunder, 



43 

there results, further, from this Principle, the third qualita- 
tive category: Determination. But, at the same time, — be- 
cause "partial" is a quantitative conception, — the categories 
of quantity are therewith known in their proper source. 

These three Principles are related to each other as thesis, 
antithesis and synthesis, and are at the foundation of the entire 
investigation. Knowledge arises from ideas of individual con- 
sciousness. In contrast with those ideas, which may come and 
go in an involuntary and contingent manner, there maintain 
themselves other sets of ideas, and these latter are characterized 
by a "feeling of necessity" that can be distinguished with entire 
certainty. That is to say, we get notions fleeting and passing by 
us, without any desire on our part to reflect upon them. On 
the other hand, there are ideas which arise with a distinct pur- 
pose, with a desire on our part to examine them. The thinker 
expressly and purposely wants to compare and distinguish them. 
These ideas are contents of an active consciousnes. They are 
manifestly different from the states of consciousness as such, but 
they influence these states. They are the non-Ego, something 
other than the Ego, and by the reciprocal activity of this Ego 
and the non-Ego, knowledge arises. Eichte calls this system of 
the ideas which emerge with a "purpose" or a "feeling of neces- 
sity" experience. He thus shows, like Kant, that expe- 
rience is a synthesis of form (Ego) and content (non-Ego). 
The forms or categories of the Ego, however, are not assumed, but 
derived in the dialectic movement by which the abstract Ego 
and the abstract non-Ego are synthesized into concrete con- 
sciousness. 

VIII. 

Hegel signifies in the main a return from Schelling to 
Fichte, a giving up of the thought that the living wealth of the 
world can be derived or deduced from the "Nothing" or abso- 
lute indifference, and the attempt to raise this empty substance 



44 

again to spirit, — to the self-determined subject.* Thus, while 
Hegel goes back to the Fichtian idea of experience as synthesis 
of Ego and non-Ego, the Ego with him is not the individual 
Ego, but that of the Absolute. The categories are derived from 
"absolute experience." The world with its categories is the 
self-unfolding of absolute experience. Such knowledge, how- 
ever, cannot have the form of intuition or immediate perception 
(Anschauung), which Schelling had claimed for the Ego or the 
Absolute, but only that of the conception or notion (Begriff). 
If all that is real or actual is the manifestation of spirit or mind, 
then logic has to develop the creative self-movement of spirit 
as a dialectical necessity. The conceptions, of which mind 
or spirit takes part and analyzes its own content, are the cate- 
gories of reality, the forms of the cosmic life ; and the task of 
philosophy is not to describe this realm of forms as a given 
manifold, but to comprehend them as moments of a single 
unitary development. The dialectical method, therefore, serves, 
with Hegel, to determine the essential nature of particular 
phenomena by the significance which they have as members or 
links in the self -unfolding of the spirit. He works this problem 
out in the scheme of the dialectic trinity of Positing, Xegation 
and Reconciliation. All conceptions, with which the human 
mind has ever thought reality or its particular groups, are 
woven together into a unified system. Each retains its assigned 
place, in which its necessity, its relative justification, is said to 
become manifest. But each proves by this same treatment tu 
be only a moment or factor which receives its true value only 
when it has been put in connection with the rest and introduced 
into the whole. Antitheses and contradictions of conceptions 
belong to the nature of the mind itself, and this also to the 
essential nature of the reality which unfolds itself from it, 
and their truth consists just in the systematic connection in 
which the categories follow from one another. 
* Hegel, Phaenomenologie, Voir. W. II, 14. 



45 

Hegel thus also makes use of an inner experience, a unity 
of subject and object in an active consciousness, but lie ex- 
tends the term to include Absolute Experience or the Idea, the 
highest form of experience. 

IX. 

So far we have dealt with the concept of experience in 
three different phases. Locke demands everywhere a sensuous 
experience coining from objects, that make their impression 
upon our mind through the medium of our senses, while Hume 
does the same thing without referring the sensuous experience 
to any source at all. 

Kant says: "Xur in der Erfahrung ist die Wahrheit.'' 
But his experience is a product of the understanding. The 
subject becomes conscious of this cosmos as his own creation, 
he gives laws to its forces, and attributes properties to its exist- 
ence. The nature of the thing-in-itself is unknown to the sub- 
ject, because he cannot experience it through the medium of 
the understanding. 

Eichte and Hegel, on the other hand, deduce from the 
unity of an active, purposive mind the knowledge of the nature 
of the world. 

In order to logically conclude the history of the develop- 
ment of the concept of experience, we ought to take into account 
what Herbart teaches. There is really no advance to be re- 
corded, in his theory, upon the preceding thinkers. He studies 
experience in order to have a guide, as it were, which is to lead 
him to absolute truth; while other philosophers maintain that 
experience contains the root of truth in itself. 

We start and must start from experience, says Herbart, 
but it gives us no immediate knowledge. It becomes, however, 
knowledge, when it is elaborated. Experience sets tasks to 
thought in as much as the sensations which we experience ar- 



46 

range themselves in certain forms and series. And in compar 
ing and compiling various empirical data with the require- 
ments of strict Logic, we attain to knowledge. For experience 
is full of mistakes and contradictions, hence it is necessary to 
go to something else in which the contradictions should be 
solved. Every sensation, he argues, gives us an appearance 
(Schein). Every appearance necessarily implies Being (Sein) 
— something permanent, which is the cause of sensation. The 
sensations are not copies of things, nor do they afford us to im- 
mediate knowledge of things, but they inevitably point to a 
Being, an absolute position within them. We never can know 
the things-in-themselves from experience, he agrees with Kant, 
but we do know from the fact that we have experience, that 
there are existences as causes of this appearance. And from 
this fact he also deduces the theory, that experience is the 
object and foundation of knowledge. The mind does not project 
knowledge, is not set over against experience, but the latter 
must be given first before the mind can act. It is impossible 
to conceive a mind transcending experience. But experience 
shows us Becoming and change; we deal with appearances 
which we cannot accept at their face-value. They are apt to be 
different at different times.. Sound is heard through the medium 
of solids or liquids, but not in a vacuum. Color is not seen 
at night as well as in the daytime. There are evidently contra- 
dictions in experience. Amidst all this change, he asks, where 
is the permanence ? Our task, then, is to find behind each 
appearance the underlying Real. Because, if we are not to 
look for some permanent truth, we are apt to fall into absolute 
scepticism. Since experience gives us many appearances, there 
must also be many Reals; a So viel Schein, so viel Sein."* 

The theory of the Real is a metaphysical one. Since the 
Ego is a Real, we ought to deal with it in Metaphysics, but, 



* Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, 149, note 2. 



47 

since it also underlies our consciousness, Herbart deals with it 
in his Psychology. As a Eeal endowed with different changing 
states or qualities, it involves contradictions. And as a psy- 
chological problem, we must consider such contradictions as 
appear in the ideality of the subject-object (of Fichte). The 
contradictions, which this ideality contains, can be removed, 
when we think the Ego as the permanent, unchanging Real 
behind the changing appearance, that it exposes to us in expe- 
rience. The Ego or soul possesses certain powers and activi- 
ties, and these are nothing else than the force of self-preserva- 
tion. These forces are variously expressed in the relation of 
one Real to other Reals. Thus, a Real, by virtue of the force 
of its activity, becomes the cause of the activity in the related 
Reals. Conscious experience is the sum total of these 'active 
relations. During this continuous conflict among the Reals we 
experience various changes in the (Schein) appearance of the 
Reals. And what in Psychology we term thinking, feeling and 
willing, is only a variety of appearances of the self-preservation 
of the soul. The Real itself during ail these activities remains 
unchanged. 

Thus, he concludes, that Fichte's "The Ego posits itself" 
depends upon an inner experience and Heraclitus' "Eternal 
flux in things" upon external experience, but either position 
cannot be regarded as final. As a result of this experience, 
then, he brings out the problem of manifoldness of existing 
things (Reals). And to explain this, means for him to remove 
these contradictions in experience. ITence, when a thing is 
presented in experience with a new quality which it did not 
possess before, we must, if we are to explain it, go beyond the 
thing itself and assume the existence of one or more other 
Reals with which our perception relates it. The difference 
between the first and second appearance of a given object of 
experience is to be elucidated by comparing it with another ob- 
ject of experience itself not yet changed. Activity (which is 



48 

also change) only seems to occnr in experience, because we re- 
late one thing to another thing occurring at intervals of time. 
Thus, the conception of activity forces itself into consciousness 
with experience. 

In arguing from phenomena (Schein) to Being (Sein) 
Herbart consistently asserts that appearance is not an essential 
quality of Being, but that every true explanation of the sensu- 
ous world must exhibit appearance as entirely contingent to 
Being.* So that, while each particular Real is independent of 
all others,, it is experience that changes and composes qualities. 

It is outside of the province of this thesis to discuss at length 
the nature of the Reals. One idea in Herbart's mind we must 
notice, viz. : that Metaphysics must underlie Psychology. 



X. 

In an exposition of this kind it may not be considered out 
of place to take account of a contemporary doctrine in vogue ; — 
not strictly dealing with experience as treated above. The whole 
doctrine is looking upon experience not as theoretical, but as 
practical, and as determining our attitude not only to knowledge, 
but to all of life. 

In Kant and his followers Ave have a most intricate analysis 
of the concept of experience. But after the task is completed 
we have, in a certain sense, made no further progress with it 
than with the Empiricist account. Herbart rightly says that 
experience contains contradictions. The theoretical exposition 
of Kant, as pointed out, contains more than one difficulty. Ulti- 
mate knowledge practically becomes impossible and resolves 
itself into belief. For it matters not now intricate the process 
may be, which gives us experience, we after all get only ideas 
and not knowledge of objects. Our contemporaries, like the 



* Herbart, Psj^chologie als Wissenschaft, 149, note 2. 



49 

school following the Dogmatists of old, tire of these subtleties, 
and turn to Radical Empiricism. It is the tendency towards 
what has been lately named "Pragmatism," the tendency, 
namely, to characterize and to estimate the processes of thought 
in terms of practical categories, and to criticise knowledge in 
the light of its bearings upon conduct, or rather action in general. 
I say action, because the word practical is not used in this 
doctrine in the Kantian sense (as used in the term "Practical 
Reason"). The word "pragmatic," in the Kantian sense, is 
(in the sense of "having a practical purpose"), — what Pro- 
fessors James and Peirce have in mind when they speak of 
"practical." The roots of this doctrine are found in FichteVs 
philosophy, which is a deliberate synthesis of pragmatism with 
absolutism. Hegel made the question a fundamental one in 
various places in his Logic. In the Phaenomenolgie, the 
romantic biography of the Weltgei&b, we find the principal 
crises due to the conflicts of the theoretical with the practical 
interests. And James, in our times, by assuming that the end 
of man is action, fairly describes the utilitarian spirit of 
Americans of to-day. 

Peirce speaks of Pragmatism in the following manner: 
"Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical 
bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. 
Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our concep- 
tion of the object." James maintains that Pragmatism is the 
"doctrine that the whole 'meaning' of a conception expresses 
itself in practical consequences," either conduct to be recom- 
mended or experiences to be expected, if the conception be true, 
which would be different if it were untrue.* 

Pragmatism, then, lays stress on the fact that there is an 
organic connection between thought and action, and this connec- 
tion manifests itself in a concrete rather than in an abstract 



* Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, article Pragmatism. 



. 50 

fashion. For we must admit that each different notion tends to 
produce a different act, and the best method of discussing 
points of theory is to begin by ascertaining what practical dif- 
ferences would result if one alternative or the other were true. 
What is the cash value of a particular truth in terms of par- 
ticular concrete experience ? This illustrates the position of 
Hume. Peirce summarizes his own position thus : "Thought 
in movement has for its only conceivable motive the attainment 
of belief, or thought at rest. Only when our thought about an 
object has found its rest in belief can our action on the subject 
firmly and safely begin. Beliefs, in short, are rules for action ; 
and the whole function of thought is but one step in the produc- 
tion of action habits. If there were any part of thought that 
made no difference in the thought's practical consequences, then 
that part would be no element of thought's significance."* 
Thus we see that the most characteristic doctrine of the 
method before us is that the meaning of an idea, or concept, 
comes out only as it modifies activity. In the idea itself there 
seems to be nothing inherent that determines whether its effects 
will be of one kind or another. All we can say of it is that, if 
it remains a vital mental content, it will have some sort of 
overt consequences. All such contents apparently stand on the 
same level in so far as they are merely beliefs, or opinions. 
And pragmatism, as expounded by James, holds that our world 
of fact is in some measure conditioned by previous beliefs, and 
the order that has once got established reacts back on the ideas 
that have not as yet emerged into full fact. 

The test of the reality of an idea is its power to influence 
action, and the way in which any sort of action or conduct comes 
into existence, is through the instrumentality of the idea or 
belief that it should be so. That is to say, our conscious atti- 
tudes are naturally organized with reference to action; hence, 



* Irving King. Pragmatism as a Philosophic Method, Phil. Rev., Vol 
XII, 5. 



51 

they are meaningless unless they in some way modify or pro- 
duce activity. And this capacity to produce change seems to be 
conditioned entirely by what is already objectively real. Mere 
working, however, will not establish the validity of a concept. 
As James and Royce demand, a working of a certain kind is 
essential. Not only must we see what difference a concept pro- 
duces, but what kind of a difference it ought to make, in order 
to make pragmatism a philosophical doctrine. For instance, y 
true philosophy must be more than a logical one. It must also 
be able to awaken active impulses or satisfy aesthetic demands. 
There are, however, various hinds of active impulses, and there- 
fore we must look still further for a standard; that is, a thing 
not rational merely because it makes a difference in conduct. 
James finds this further criterion in the familiarity of the 
action that is aroused by the thought; that which suggests cus- 
tomary movements in which we can easily pass from one thing 
to another, we regard as rational. The suggested activity must 
further be congruous with our spontaneous powers, must not 
baffle or contradict our active propensities. In the above state- 
ment we find a radical difference from dialectical philosophy. 
Pragmatism sets over the concept of a rational philosophy 
against a merely logical one, for it assumes that thought may 
be logical and yet not reasonable. For after all, we act as 
though the world of activity was a given fact, and in virtue of 
this fact, it is valid. Hence, congruity of the new with the old 
is the test of the reasonableness of the new. So that a thought 
or experience comes true when proved to produce such new 
results as are in harmony with old facts. 

To sum up, we may say of pragmatism that, as first pro- 
posed by Peirce, it primarily furnishes a practical maxim, to 
the effect that consequences in action or conduct of any concept 
or idea are really all there can be to the meaning of the concept. 
It is not, however, mere consequences that concern the prag- 
matist. There is a "concrete reasonableness" over and above 



52 

all concepts, an objective system of which they are to become 
a part if they refer to real differences in the ultimate constitu- 
tion of things. 

The emphasis of both James and Peirce is essentially on 
the practical. The theoretical is constantly to submit to the 
test of the concrete. And by concrete I mean the conception 
that finds its proof and test in the analysis of everything that 
betrays a reflective elaboration in the process of experience. 
There can be no doubt that it is this that makes pragmatism an 
attractive doctrine. The man who is impatient with meta- 
physics feels that here at last he can escape the v^aries of 
theoretical speculation by referring everything to concrete expe- 
rience. 



CONCLUSION. 

From the foregoing investigation we may conclude that the 
concept of experience is elaborated for the first time in the 
Philosophy of the Stoics. The ancients could not have spoken 
of the concept of experience in relation to knowledge, for they 
accepted knowledge as given and ready made. With them it 
was only a matter of defining what knowledge was, rather than 
explaining its origin. 

In modern times the theory of the concept of experience 
becomes significant, for modern philosophy becomes critical. It 
goes back of the ancients and asks how knowledge is possible at 
all, and in giving account of a possible knowledge it must 
necessarily look into the elements that go to make up that 
knowledge. Such critical procedure demands proofs and tests 
for the truth of such a possibility, and the concept of experience 
becomes the basis of knowledge. Up to the time of Locke the 
ontological and cosmological problem was paramount, but he 
placed more weight upon the psychological, or rather the episte- 
mological problem. He examined the ways in which the human 
mind attains to knowledge, and concluded that through sensuous 
intuitions we get ideas of objects. The ideas are stamped upon 
our mind, which is a blank tablet. The senses are the avenues 
through which the objects project their images and give rise to 
a consciousness of them. This is the sensuous experience which 
Locke adopts as his basis of knowledge. This view swayed the 
mind of the entire Empirical School. 

Locke, however, was not entirely free from the ontological 
influences of his predecessors. He clearly distinguishes primal 



54 

from secondary qualities of things; the latter are produced in 
us as sensations, such as color, tone, etc., but are not present in 
objects, while the former, such as bulk, figure, etc., are inherent 
in the objects themselves, and we only form notions about them 
by an inner reflection. Such a theory carried to its logical 
consequence inust become untenable. And Hume clearly shows 
this fallacy. He agrees with Locke as to the absence of the 
intellectual factor (in the ideal sense). Then sense-experience 
is the sole basis of validity. Only our present, momentary 
sensuous intuitions or those of our past experiences retained 
in memory are known to us. Since then such ideas as of sub- 
stance and causality are not mediated to us through sensuous 
intuitions, we are unable to know anything of them. In carry- 
ing out Locke's theory to its logical conclusion, Hume gave rise 
to the profounder investigations of Kant. 

The philosopher from Koenigsberg was neither satisfied 
with the onesidedness of the theory of the dogmatic-idealistic 
school of Leibnitz, nor with that of the empirical one of Locke. 
He started all over again, and as a result gave the concept of 
experience a new aspect — he was not satisfied with a passive 
mind. It is the activity of the understanding exerted upon the 
raw material given through the senses that constitutes Kant's 
concept of experience. Both elements are the indispensable con- 
stituents that go to make up knowledge. The senses cannot 
think and the mind cannot see. The mind receives the impres- 
sions through the senses and, transvaluing them, gives them 
form, and thus produces knowledge. Experience, then, is 
not a terminus a quo but ad quern. Kant, however, deals with 
the knowledge of appearances, of phenomena. Things as they 
are in themselves, he maintains, we cannot know, because we 
cannot verify that knowledge in the sphere of our experience. 
It remained, then, for Kant's successors to explain how we 
come to know the noumenal world- order. 

Fichte, in elaborating the concept of experience as a crite- 



55 

rion of knowledge, develops the subjective side of Kantianism 
to its extreme, while Schelling does the same thing with the 
objective side of Kantianism. Experience, says Fichte, is the 
fact-act, the synthesizing activity of the mind, the unity of an 
active, striving, purposive consciousness, the subject-objectivity. 

Hegel tries to blend the theories of Fichte and Schelling. 
He agrees with Fichte's fact-act and with Schelling as to the 
possibility of having absolute knowledge. But he objects to 
their method. He discards Schelling' s method as producing a 
ready-made knowledge, as if shot out of a pistol. We do not 
have knowledge, Hegel says, boxed in receptacles ready for us 
to label at pleasure. In order to attain absolute knowledge, we 
must pass through a series of degrees. We begin with sensuous 
appearance, and by the dialectical method develop the concept, 
until we obtain absolute knowledge of phenomena through a 
combination of outer and inner experience. The thing-in-itself 
is only an abstraction. 

And finally, Herbart tried to get all the truth out of all 
these previous expositions of the concept of experience. He 
was a sort of an eclectic. He says we begin with experience, 
and under this term he includes an inner and an outer experi- 
ence. But we shall find contradictions between what is given 
from these two sources. We must appeal to Logic, he argues, 
in order to remove these contradictions and clear up the matter, 
and thus attain to true knowledge. But experience at all events 
is the first element in knowledge, and ultimately becomes its 
basis, for without it knowledge would be impossible. 

In conclusion we noted that, while preceding philosophies 
as considered, had laid stress upon the intellectual way of ar- 
riving at truth, Pragmatism, which still is immature as a philo- 
sophical doctrine and scarcely deserving a place in the history 
of philosophy, nevertheless marks a healthy tendency, viz. : to 
consider the problems of the world, not by the intellect alone, 
but by the whole of man's rational nature. 



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57 

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58 

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